Children in the school have had the opportunity to be part of the creative digital learning programme, with the Year 2 - 6 children going to the Creative Space weekly and the year 7&8 classes continuing digital creativity projects throughout the year in their own space . The Creative Space programme and the Maker Space programme share a timetable where classes receive both digital learning lessons in the Creative Space and time in the Maker Space for a one hour block each week. The Creative Space programme is based around SiSoMo (Sight, Sound, Motion). Time in Creative Space supports teachers by enabling them to have their CRT release time.
New Entrant and Year one children have learned important basic skills for using their iPads for learning in class with their teachers. They continue to use the digital tool, Explain Everything as their main tool for sharing their learning on their iPad.
In Creative Space, the Year Two students began the year by learning the basics of digital drawing. In Photopea, they drew pictures of various strengths and interests that they have. In term 2, the year two students continued developing their digital drawing capabilities by creating short animations of various emotions.. In term 3, the year two students created animations in Photopea that demonstrated different changes in matter. Finally, in term 4, the year two students continued to develop their digital drawing skills using Photopea, by creating animations of themselves with their whanau. The idea behind this final project was to create a backing for their prizegiving performance about the “Love of a family.”
Focussing on the digital drawing supported development on the children’s fine motor skills and supported their digital fluency development. The major skills they learned were:
Logging into the iMacs using a password
Digital Drawing: Using a paint brush to draw black outlines, using a paint bucket to colour in, using the eraser to rub out.
Digital Drawing: Shortcut (Command+Z) for undoing a previous command; Shortcut (Command+C;Command+V) for copying and pasting.
Simple animating in Photopea.
In term 1, the year three and four students learned the basics of animating in Photopea. They created a simple animation of thier interest. In term 2, the year three and four students learned the basics of movie-making in iMovie. They created movies of their term theme. In term 3, the year three and four students continued to develop their animation capabilities in Photopea. Their task was to create an animation of a sport of their choice. In term 4, the year three and four students developed their digital fluency skills and computation. Their task was to create an interactive, DLO (digital learning object), which other students could interact with on their blog.
In term 1, the year five and six students learned the basics of animating in Photopea. They created digital animation about the past, present and future. The year five and six students learned to use cameras to portray the School Rules. In term 3, the year five and six students created animations in Photopea to show part of a chosen sport. In term 4, the year five and six students developed their computational thinking.
The tasks have included sections designed to develop children’s higher order thinking skills. The main aim for our senior children is that by the end of Year Six they will be empowered to select the digital learning tools best suited to complete a given task. Some students in year five and six are also learning to be videographers, photographers, editors and producers of movies.
The Year Seven and Eight team continue to select the digital learning tools that best suit a given task. Some students are competent videographers, editors and producers of movies and support in the process of creating the weekly Prefects’ Korero as well as the Pt England Network News.
A group of keen year 4 to 8 children often utilise their lunchtimes to continue creative tasks in the Creative Space. This provides an opportunity for like-minded children to collaborate, share ideas and explore in a relaxed, quiet and safe environment.
Every class in the school (from Year 0 - 8) has their own class blog. Every student from Year 0-8 also has their own individual student Edublog which they begin to learn how to use from Year 1. By Year 3, most children are able to independently blog their learning. There is an expectation that the children share their learning on their individual blog. Children are also encouraged to comment on other’s blogs and to reply to comments written on their blog. Blogging allows the students to share their work in a meaningful and real way. It is a way that their friends, teachers, whānau and the wider community can celebrate their work which is highly motivating for our tāmariki. This feedback and feed forward process is invaluable. Many students have also benefited from participating in the Manaiakalani Summer Learning Journey and registrations have now been opened for this summer’s programme. Data from Woolf Fisher Research proves that blogging over the school holidays helps to maintain or improve literacy levels for students who participate.
All students across the school contributed successfully to the annual Manaiakalani Film Festival on Wednesday 8th November 2024. Pt England School submitted 25 movies this year. This is a huge credit to all of our teachers who made this happen. It was fantastic to be able to celebrate the children and their movies by taking the whole school to Hoyts Sylvia Park for the day-time viewings.
We had 50 student presenters at the cinema throughout the day, introducing their movies to live audiences made up of students from across all of the Manaiakalani Schools. They were all confident, clear and put a huge amount of time and energy into ensuring they knew their lines.
Our movies were once again a wonderful and varied selection. Five of our movies also showcased in the evening show, which included a variety of movies from all of the Manaiakalani schools.
The implementation of the ipad programme has continued across the Junior School and has continued to result in increased success for our learners. The maintenance of ipads has been managed by Kent Somerville.
All year 4 to 8 classes have their own chrome books and all are operating successfully as 1:1 classes. Maintenance of chromebooks and loan books has been managed by Te Awhina Dewes, Ana Va’afusuaga and Leigh Flavelle this year. We were also fortunate enough to have a number of students receive chromebooks as donations from the Chen Foundation in Term 3 of this year.
Throughout the year there has continued to be a variety of professional development opportunities for teachers to develop and improve their digital skills.
We have spent time in Staff Meetings ensuring teachers are aware of the range of digital tools and equipment we have available in the school to support learning experiences. This included a session teaching students how to use Adobe Express
Manaiakalani professional development has revolved around the Learn-Create-Share pedagogy. These meetings encourage teachers to share their practice with the wider Manaiakalani community and often consider how digital technologies can enhance learning for our children. We had Dorothy Burt come into one of our staff meetings this year to discuss Learn-Create-Share, with a focus on AI (Artifical Intelligence) which has developed widely over the past year.
Finally, all Pt England School teachers have met in collaborative inquiry groups to discuss their teaching as inquiry progress for the year. These inquiries are recorded on individual teacher blogs.
The production of PENN (Pt England News Network) sits with a team of keen Year 4 to 8 students. This year, we had 45 students contribute as Presenters on the news. Our most regular presenter presented over 70 times this year!
The children are competent in the presenting, videography and photography of the daily news programme. It supports their reading, confidence and provides an authentic learning experience for children across a range of year levels. The system for classes contributing items once a term has continued. This ensures regular sharing of what is happening around our school.
The focus of the news is the celebration of learning as well as the communication of events, and can be accessed daily from the home page of the Pt England School website. This continues to be a powerful motivator for our students to share what they are learning and creating.
These are the same as last year’s considerations as they continue to be important for us to keep at the forefront of our thinking as educators.
Continue to strive for equitable access to digital learning opportunities for every child in every class.
Continue to strive for better use of the iMacs in the classroom and to encourage teacher support of the inquiry project students are working on in the Creative Space.
Keep thinking about the year 1 digital competency programme and what this looks like going forward.
Maintain high standards of movie production by all teachers and provide continued support from the Creative Space for this. We should continue to strive in making movie-making authentic, with students being creators of content.
Strive to and improve in making clearer links between learn, create and share in a purposeful way for children at all year levels. This should ideally be really visible through student blogs.
Keeping up with the commenting/feedback with the rate our students are producing posts, especially in the senior school. We should be encouraging this from both the school end as well as from home by whānau.
Continuing to build a rounded digital create programme to support children in a range of digitally creative opportunities with strong progressions and assessment for the appropriate age and stage of development.
Continuing to develop the Pt England Network News (PENN) to the point where children are producing, filming, presenting and editing the news, mostly independently. Using roles in the PENN crew to support children to build confidence, develop oral language capabilities and be given opportunities to lead.
The Creative Space has continued to evolve this year, particularly with the strengthening of using Photopea as our primary tool for animating. Learn-Create-Share continues to be strongly present throughout 2023 in many aspects of school life.
Tia Peleti/Russell Burt
Digital Learning/Extension Teacher
November 2024